Pandemics - SCRIPT Today I am going to talk about pandemics and my research question is: How can we prevent the outbreak of pandemics, such as the recent Ebola outbreak, in the future? Etymology First I'm going to explain the origin of the words pandemic and epidemic. Both of those words essentially mean the same thing, a highly contagious, rapidly spreading disease, with the only difference being that a pandemic takes place on a global scale while an epidemic occurs in just one country or region. Both words stem from the Greek words epi, pan and demos and literally means on all people. History So, now I am going to talk a little bit about the history of pandemics. 1347-1353: The Black Death The first pandemic that was widely recognized …show more content…
To this date Cholera is still a global problem and causes about 130.000 deaths every year. Another major outbreak was the 1918 Spanish flu, which was extremely contagious. 500 million people all around the world were infected and 50 to 100 million of them were killed, which was about 3-5% of the world’s population. What really accelerated the spread of the disease was the fact that for a long time reports about the outbreak were withheld from the public due to military reasons connected with World War I. Interestingly, the only country where newspapers reported on the flu was Spain, which was neutral. Therefore, the impression was created that this country was the only one affected. Therefore, the name Spanish flu. The last pandemic that I would like to mention is 2002 SARS outbreak. SARS is the abbreviation for “severe acute respiratory syndrome”. It started in Southern China in 2002. Within a short period of time it had spread to 37 countries, mostly due to international air travel. The initial symptoms are flu-like, which obviously made it really difficult to detect. So now to get back to my research question: here are the three main causes all major outbreaks have in